The UK government urgently needs to adopt the following key recommendations (the full list can be found in the report):
- Ensure that no weakening of UK pesticide regulations or standards occurs as a result of Brexit, including through trade negotiations with non-EU countries, and that in turn food imports meet these same UK standards.
- Introduce measures to support UK farmers to transition to whole farm agroecological systems that include genuine and holistic Integrated Pest Management (IPM), of which organic and agroforestry are well defined examples. Most notably:
- Use future farmer payments under the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) to incentivise and reward farmers.
- Create a new independent extension service for research, development and dissemination of IPM techniques.
- Facilitate farmer-to-farmer learning on agroecology and IPM.
- Introduce a clear, quantitative target for significantly reducing the overall use of pesticides in agriculture.
- Phase out all non-agricultural uses of pesticides and ban public authorities from spraying next to homes, schools and playgrounds.
- Establish robust environmental and human health monitoring systems for pesticide use which moves beyond the focus on individual pesticides and is able to assess combined toxic load.
Conduct government-funded research into the effects of pesticide cocktails on the natural environment, wildlife and human health.